


where it goes

by neyvenger (jjjat3am)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 23:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14151486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/neyvenger
Summary: Auba isn’t quite sure how he ends up in Ibiza with Marco after all.





	where it goes

**Author's Note:**

> Photo prompt for the footballprompts comm

 

Auba isn’t quite sure how he ends up in Ibiza with Marco after all. There’d been a texted question and London had felt cold, and rainy, so he’d said yes. Marco had emailed him the information a few hours later. And that was that.

 

Auba gets to the house early and tips the cab driver for going so far out of his way. The house rises still and silent before him. He’s been here before, a few years ago, but Marco had been there for a while then and the house already felt like him.

 

His feet echo in the hallways, and he leaves his bags in the foyer, all in a pile, and goes outside to the beach. It’s dark outside, but if he lights up the back porch, he can see the edge of the water and distant, dark shapes beyond.

 

He stands there until fatigue settles in his bones, and then he goes back inside, faceplants in the first bed he sees and sleeps until Marco’s key scrapes in the lock the next morning.

 

*

 

They don’t talk.

 

They’ve never had to do that much. First, there was the language barrier and by the time Auba’s mouth had learned to shape around German vowels, it had been too late. And second, they never needed to. There’s an understanding that comes from on-pitch partnerships and Auba has never felt it this strongly with anyone,  and it hadn’t faded even when Marco was injured.

 

Besides - there’s plenty spoken in the soft scrape of Marco’s teeth against his throat, in the way he tilts his whole body into Auba’s hands. For this language, Auba has written the dictionary - vowels in the way Marco’s body shakes under his hands, punctuation in the force of his kisses.

 

The first time in maybe forever when they desperately need to talk, they don’t talk at all. It's almost alright.

 

*

 

Ibiza feels like a time capsule.

 

Auba wants to steal Marco’s sunglasses and take one of his flip-flops, and bury them deep into the sand so that one day the tides will reveal them to people who come after and make them wonder who they belonged to.

 

But, there’s no way to document the way Marco dances across the beach, revelling in a body that isn’t broken for the first time in forever. He challenges Auba to races and Auba lets him win just to hear him laugh, as the sea erases their footprints in the sand.

 

Ibiza feels like time exists only for them to lose, months gone like minutes. Auba daydreams of freezing moments, like the sweep of Marco’s eyelashes across his cheek, like his mouth pressed against the salt slick skin of Marco’s collarbone.

 

*

 

It only rains once while they’re there. They sit on the porch, listening to the rainfall, sticking their feet out, only to yelp when the cold droplets hit them. Auba is wearing Marco’s sweatshirt even when it’s just a tiny bit too small and he finds himself absentmindedly tracing the stark yellow eleven embroidered on it.

 

Marco rests his head on his shoulder and then suddenly he’s talking, words falling out like the summer rain. Auba only catches every second word. A few months in England and his German has already gotten rusty, his English rounding out instead, filling with new vocabulary.

 

In the way of immigrant children, Auba fits his pieces to the world around him even when that changes. In the process, some things get left behind.

 

Marco talks, a stream of consciousness, about how he’s excited about the season, for the team, for all the things his body can do again, and Auba listens. He’s trying to find traces of himself in Marco’s words and it’s not the absence that hurts - it’s how natural it is.

 

*

 

Auba goes to Gabon for a week. He still has family there. A couple cousins, and aunts and uncles, and his grandmother. Her eyes are half blind with cataracts, but her hand is sure where she touches his cheek, and it’s calloused from a lifetime of work.

 

He doesn’t bring Marco. He hadn’t even when they were still in Dortmund together, so there’s even less reason for it now. Maybe Marco wants to go. Auba hasn’t asked but it’s not like he wants to know. He doesn’t want him here, in one of the rare pieces of his life that are untouched by him. 

 

In the afternoon, he goes to the beach. 

 

Forest ends abruptly, melting into soft sand. He takes off his shoes to go the rest of the way, picking his way down to the water. He’s alone. His family owns this beach and they’re all up in the main house, catching up.

 

He watches the waves roll in for a while, the water splashing over his feet. It’s not quiet, but it’s peaceful. He stands there for long enough that the sun starts its descent over the horizon. The sunset is spectacular. 

 

Auba takes his eyes off it for long enough to speed-dial on Facetime. Marco’s greeting is soft and questioning. He’s lying down, curled up with a shirt bunched up under his head. It hurts to be somewhere he can’t touch him.

 

Auba doesn’t say anything, he just turns his phone and shows Marco the beach, listens to his intake of breath. Then he stares at the sunset and tries to hear Marco breathing through the static, over the crash of the waves.

 

It grows dark soon enough. He turns his phone back to himself for the last few sun rays. It’s gotten dark in Ibiza too and Marco is bracketed in shadow. He smiles at him, and waves. Auba waves back and disconnects the call. 

 

*

 

Marco touches him like he’s starving, from the first day to the last. 

 

They never used to make love like this.

 

Auba never bit for Marco’s collarbone, running his tongue over the fragile bones. Marco never used to press bruises on his hips, like he’s leaving pieces of himself for Auba to discover for days afterwards.

 

And the last night -

 

Marco touches him like he’s something fragile. He presses Auba down into the sheets and he lets him because there’s something in Marco’s gaze that’s paralyzing. He runs his fingers down Auba’s skin, follows them with his tongue, and it feels like he’s everywhere.

 

The smell of him is in Auba’s nose, the taste of him in his mouth, the warmth of him on his skin, and if only it could always be like this. If only Auba could climb into Marco’s chest and live there, ear pressed to the thundering beat of his heart.

 

Marco presses kisses to his body and they hurt as much as they heal because Marco kisses like he’s memorizing and Auba desperately wants him to forget. If Marco forgets, that means he’ll come back to refresh his memory some time and everything won’t have to feel so final.

  
  
  


*

 

Summer ends. Marco packs his sunglasses and Auba resists the urge to leave behind his flip-flops. And they board separate planes. Marco, to Münich, then to Dortmund, and he’s been complaining about the layover for days. Auba for London, because red is his colour now and home is a stadium in the rain.

 

They don’t talk about it. And nothing feels fixed. 

 

But he cups Marco’s cheek in his hand and Marco lets him, and there’s still a softness in the way he watches him, and maybe it doesn’t have to be like this forever. Maybe they can postpone it for another season.

 

And that can be that.

  
  



End file.
